east of Havana. Esencia Group, a British
company, has agreed to build Carbonera
Club outside Varadero, the home of
Cuba’s only existing 18-hole golf course,
and Hong Kong-based Beijing Enterprises
Holdings aims to build Bellomonte Golf
& Country Club in Guanabo, a fishing
village that the Havana Times likens to a
ghost town.

Even these successes, however, illuminate some hazards involved in Cuban golf
development. For example, it took Esencia
seven years to hammer out an agreement
with a government that professes to be 100
percent committed to building a dozen
golf resorts.

And Esencia’s struggles don’t come close
to being the worst experience a company
can have in Cuba. Bellomonte was initiated a decade ago by a British firm, Coral
Capital, which left Cuba in 2013, never to
return. In 2011, the company’s top executives were accused of being spies, and
then, when the accusations didn’t stick,
charged with financial crimes. They were
held in prisons for months before they
were permitted to return home.

“Cuba isn’t Dubai,” Kavulich said. “It’s apoor country with a lot of debt. It’ll offermany opportunities, but also many chal-lenges.”People who weren’t alive before theCuban missile crisis may not appreciatehow easy it once was for Americans totravel to Cuba, and how often they did it.

Before the revolution, Havana was “the
Latin Las Vegas.” It had an anything-goes
vibe and an assortment of casinos, nightclubs and striptease joints. Lots of U.S.
corporations did business there. In the
1940s, the Brooklyn Dodgers held training camps at one of the city’s ballparks.
Ernest Hemingway made his winter home
in one of its hotels. Al Capone had a place
in Varadero, not far from the nine-hole
golf course at Irénée du Pont’s estate. Sam
Snead, Arnold Palmer and other professional golfers played on Cuban courses,
two of them Donald Ross originals.

Today, Cuba remains a popular vaca-tion spot. Last year, it attracted more than
3 million visitors, a record number. In fact,it’s now the second most popular destina-tion in the Caribbean, after the DominicanRepublic.Thanks to President Obama, however,Cuba is No. 2 two with an asterisk. It wasObama, after all, who initiated policiesthat will eventually bring Cuba in from theCold War and open it to U.S. tourists. Ifthe ban on U.S. travel is lifted, Cuban offi-cials believe, 1.5 million Americans willmake their way to the island every year.Such a parade could touch off a golfboom in Cuba. Presuming a participationrate of 8 percent, 1.5 million U.S. travel-ers translate to 120,000 golfers. Add in anequal number from other nations, andCuba could have a golf industry that easilyrings up more than 500,000 rounds a year.Before such dreams can be realized, ofcourse, Cuba needs destination-worthycourses and hotels to suit. Today, Cubadoesn’t have even one five-star hotel.Though it has a $2.6 billion tourismindustry, it mostly attracts low-incomevacationers who are content to lounge onbeaches all day. Imagine how its tourismreceipts would increase if it could lure bigspenders.That’s what Carbonera and Bellomonteaim to do. Borrowing from formulas per-fected in Cancún, they’ll feature nicelyappointed hotels, upscale places to eat anddrink, marinas that can berth yachts, spasand shopping areas, not to mention vaca-tion villas and condos that will be availablefor purchase.No, there doesn’t seem to be anythinguniquely Cuban about them. If they endup being indistinguishable from otherresorts in the Caribbean, well, maybe that’sthe price Castro must pay for conductingan experiment that failed. His workers’paradise is already a paradise lost.The U.S. trade embargo explains whyU.S. developers haven’t built any golfcourses in Cuba, but it doesn’t explain whydevelopers from other nations haven’t.What business fears most is uncer-tainty. Several years ago, when asked toevaluate the prospects for golf develop-ment in Cuba, Kavulich predicted that thenation would be “the sand trap from hell.”Although he’s softened his appraisal — henow thinks of it as merely “an extremelychallenging bunker” — his view nonethe-less reflects the doubts that paralyze inves-tors.Cuba’s golf landscape is littered with fail-ures. Loma Linda Golf Estates, a Canadianventure in Holguin Province, fizzled out.Jibacoa, a Canadian-backed resort nearSanta Cruz del Norte, has made virtu-ally no progress since the 1990s. LaAltura, proposed by Spanish investorsfor property near Bahia Honda, is spin-ning its wheels. A Spanish group’s resorton the island’s westernmost tip has gonenowhere. A Vietnamese group’s resort insuburban Havana is dead in the water.Now that the United States has movedto normalize relations, of course, prospec-tive private-sector partners are gettingmore confident about risking their moneyin Cuba. But that won’t necessarily makegolf development easier, because Cubanofficials have become more determined todrive a hard bargain.“They aren’t as desperate as they used tobe,” Kavulich believes. “They’re willing towait for a better offer.”Kavulich predicts that Cuba will becomehome to five or six golf resorts in the nextdecade or so, enough to make it a player onthe international golf scene. Just as impor-tantly, though, the emergence of a golfindustry in Cuba will have consequencesthroughout the Caribbean. Competitionwill force Cuba’s neighbors to refresh theirgolf operations. New courses will be built,and existing properties will be overhauled.Marketing battles will be declared, andprice wars will be fought.“Cuba isn’t going to get a free ride,”Kavulich said. “Other countries in theCaribbean won’t just sit back and let Cubatake their golf business. They have moremoney than Cuba does, and they’re goingto compete.”

Until then, a question lingers: Will
Cuba ever fully embrace the sport it hates
to love?